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Godzilla (2014) Pre-Review

SPOILER ALERT: This article is a review/synopsis of the upcoming blockbuster Godzilla, which no one has seen yet. Including myself……

Do you remember the first time you watched a Godzilla movie? I do. As a young lad, I remember spending the night at my grandparents house from time to time. One night at grandma’s house, I was watching something on the TV when I switched the channel to the beginning of a Saturday Evening Movie on the local FOX affiliate. The movie was Godzilla 1985, and I was hooked. I don’t know how I got away with it. My grandma would never have let me watch something like Godzilla. There are still several of the twenty something Godzilla movies I haven’t seen, but let me tell you about the latest one I didn’t watch.

Godzilla (2014) , staring Bryan Cranston, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Morgan Freeman, and Gilbert Gottfried as the voice of Godzilla, is a retelling of the 1954 classic. In this version, the King of the Monsters is a product of radioactive fallout from the Fukushima power plant disaster in Japan. The opening scenes of the movie, show clips of news coverage from the tsunami in 2011, and the resulting meltdown at the nuclear power plant. As the opening credits finish, we see a computerized map showing the spread of radioactive waste from the Fukushima plant in Japan, all the way south to the Indonesian Islands………home of the Komodo Dragon.

The movie starts out at a sink-hole in the middle of some jungle somewhere. There are scientist and other generally smart folks milling about, doing science and whatnot. Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston), lead scientist of a team dispatched by M.U.T.O., shows up. He and his team are at the site to take over from the university students or whoever the original science folks are. Turns out, the scientists have stumbled into some old mine or something in this sinkhole, and in the mine they find some skeletons that look like they’ve been munched on, and also an enormous cocoon.

Back at the lab in San Francisco, Bryan Cranston is getting all sciency with the cocoon they brought back from this sinkhole when we meet his daughter, Elle (Elizabeth Olsen), who is on spring break from college. Blah blah blah. Boring parts………

Ok. The action finally kicks off when all the animals in and around the city start freaking out for no reason. Most people in San Francisco know that animals have a sixth sense and know when an earthquake is about to break loose, so they assume it’s about to get all rumbly tumbly in the City by the Bay. What they aren’t expecting is Godzilla! So the big fella comes lumbering out of the bay and does what he does best, which is diminish property values in his general vicinity. I’m glad they decided to give him nuclear breath in this rendition. I half expected him to be all girly like the last Godzilla. Anyhow, in the meantime we’ve learned that these cocoons (they found several more) contain some kind of enormous moth that has the wingspan of a 747, and a venomous bite or whatever. So after the military has a go at taking Godzilla down, with no luck, the brains over at M.U.T.O. convince the military brass to send a team of Seals back in to the evacuated city to get their cocoons out. Reason being, they figure these moths will be able to bite the giant lizard that is destroying the city, and the venom will kill him? Wait, no. They want to get the venom they extracted from the moth larvae and put it into a warhead to shot into his face and poison him. Yeah. That’s it.

Oh, and of course there is a love story to ruin the movie. The Brody family are trapped at the lab, and conveniently, Elle’s boyfriend Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) just happens to be one of the Navy Seals that halo jump into the city. The Seal team makes their way to the lab, dodging Godzilla and sustaining heavy casualties the whole way. When they finally get there Elle and Ford embrace. And that’s enough of that crap.

Lots of people die trying to get the venom out of the city, including Joe Brody and Morgan Freeman. The military gets busy making their poison warhead, and of course they only have enough for one shot. Blah blah blah. More stuff happens. They fire the missile. Godzilla shoots it down. Everybody is all like “Oh man. That sucks.” Then we get to the final hoorah. What the scientists didn’t know was that the venom also contained a pheromone. When Godzilla blows up the warhead, the pheromone gets aerosoled and junk, and wafts its way around the world. This in turn wakes up the mommy and daddy giant moths, which are way bigger than the others, and they fly into the city to exact their vengeance on whatever killed their babies. Godzilla has some of the pheromone on him, so that’s what they go after. We get a pretty good monster battle which culminates in the Mojave desert. Godzilla kills both the giant moths just before falling into another sink-hole. The military tosses a couple nukes in after him and seal up the hole. The end.

So I really enjoyed the movie. Tons of action and great special effects. The story gets a little convoluted at times, but hey. It’s a Godzilla movie for crying out loud! I found it ironic that in this movie it’s Japan’s lack of caution with nuclear technology that creates Godzilla, and he attacks the United States. Totally opposite of the original. Godzilla is set to be released on the world May 16th. I’ve got my calendar marked and I’m saving up pop cans to cash in so I’ll be able to purchase a ticket. Hope to see everyone at the theater on opening night!

About Josh

I like movies, doggies, books on tape, videogames, books on paper, watching people fall down, science, and a good burger/taco. My past work experience includes: working at a movie theater, van, choo choo train, cleaning toilets, and secret job at a secret place. Don’t ask. I don’t have a deep knowledge of the inner workings of how a movie is made. I don’t know all the technical mumbo jumbo associated with the industry. Not yet at least. I’m mostly just an average red blooded American who likes to go to the theater and watch a good show without trying to break down every scene as if I were Sigmund Freud. Sometimes a movie is just a movie, and explosions are awesome.